January 19
Between three and four in the morning was when human awareness was at its weakest.
In the latter half of a night's sleep, brain activity slowed, the body's functions dropped to their lowest level, consciousness nearly vanished, and the ability to respond to outside stimuli became feeble.
Even a little later, when morning was near and people were about to wake, the body still had not fully recovered. After a full night's sleep, a person gradually transitioned from deep sleep to light sleep, then finally to wakefulness. During that process, awareness slowly returned, but it remained fragile—hence that groggy, disoriented feeling, or the classic morning foul mood.
That was why night raids were so often launched at this hour: they were almost impossible to guard against. For an enemy planning a sneak attack, there was no better time.
And while Kyoko and the others lay asleep on their soft beds, unwelcome guests had already arrived nearby.
A group of men, their load-bearing rigs marked with various religious symbols, were stationed in the building opposite Kyoko's, watching her side from the darkness.
Their gear was damaged to varying degrees. Some of them were wrapped in bandages, and the whole squad looked battered and ragged.
A balding middle-aged man with a face full of stubble sat in a chair, injecting a red fluid into his arm. Beside him, a tall, gaunt man was loading bullets into his rifle one by one, the four-lensed night-vision device on his helmet lowered into place. All in all, the squad still looked fairly capable.
The man who had just finished injecting himself stood up, pulled on a gas mask, and faced the dispirited men gathered below.
"I know you're all exhausted. We took heavy losses on this mission. One 105mm shell wiped out an entire squad of ours."
At those words, the men who had been on the receiving end of the 16 Maneuver Combat Vehicle's 105mm cannon couldn't help but feel a chill crawl down their backs.
They had only just finished gathering up the remaining survivors inside the Fukushima nuclear plant and were riding back in their jeeps, eating hotpot and singing, looking forward to resting at their temporary base. Then they had run headlong into three armored vehicles advancing in a straight line.
Before they could react, the enemy's guns had roared. The 105mm cannon and the 30mm autocannon opened fire at once.
Where the shells landed, the jeeps and the men on them were torn into scattered limbs. Bloody mud mixed with smoke and dirt flew everywhere. They had no anti-armor weapons with them, so all they could do was return fire with the jeep's 12.7mm machine gun—but the rounds had no hope of penetrating frontal armor. They sparked and ricocheted uselessly, leaving only bright white flashes.
"…So now we make up for it with results. Several special task teams have vanished without explanation in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima. The branch is furious. If we solve this, we can at least give them something when we get back. Heaven favors the diligent—we've already found the culprits. The armored vehicle we saw in the daytime ended up parked here. The people we want are in that building."
He made a slashing gesture across his throat.
"We're going to finish them."
At that, the mood shifted. The bald man's bloodthirsty gesture was terrifying—though the shine of his bare scalp also made him faintly ridiculous.
"Yes, boss!"
Below him, the men straightened up, checked their gear, and chambered rounds in unison.
These mercenaries were working for the Apostles because of profit, nothing more. If they botched this mission, it was entirely possible they would be infected and turned into biological weapons themselves. They needed a fresh accomplishment, fast. Otherwise, Tokyo branch wouldn't even need to punish them—the Fukushima special task unit would tear them apart first.
That was why they were taking this risk.
"Good. Move according to plan."
He waved them off. The squad split up. The sniper moved onto the rooftop. The assault team headed downstairs. Another unit remained behind to provide suppressing fire.
As commander, the bald man did not stay safely in the rear. Instead, he took the lead personally, helmet strapped on, machine gun in hand. The drug he had injected was already taking effect; the red flush on his face glowed beneath the half-mask, hiding his vicious grin.
No one found this strange. That was simply how their boss operated.
The infected moving south had largely gathered in Miyagi Prefecture already, and combined with Miyagi's local hordes, the first wave of the corpse tide had reached a scale of four million.
Tokyo was pressuring every outlying unit to return as fast as possible. The decisive blow against the remaining Japanese government strongholds was about to begin.
So this job had to be finished quickly. If they could not get back to the nuclear plant before dawn, they would have another problem on their hands.
Crunching through the snow, they advanced toward Kyoko's building. Once the sniper fired the opening shot, they would storm up from below.
Everything was unfolding just as planned.
Too bad they failed to notice the mines buried under the snow.
"Hey, watch it. There's wire here."
One of the men in front spotted a bit of metal mesh still poking through and signaled the others to stop.
"Baranigail, get the entrenching shovel and clear it."
"Yes, boss."
Because this raid had been thrown together on short notice, they had not brought proper gear. No bomb disposal tools, no mine detectors.
It was just one building. Surely it couldn't be that dangerous, right? They were only picking up some extra money on the side.
Never in their wildest dreams had they imagined that under this snow lay trip mines and pressure mines in such numbers.
"Hm? Feels like I hit something."
Before becoming a mercenary, Baranigail had been a butcher, so he used a lot of force. One hard jab with the shovel snapped the tripwire.
Before he could even react, the anti-personnel mine packed with explosives and steel balls detonated.
The men behind him didn't even understand what had happened before the blast wave hurled them backward.
In an instant, fire shot skyward. Shrapnel flew in every direction, shredding everything nearby into something like a hornet's nest. After the chain of explosions, the smoke and dust kicked up were so thick that no one could tell how many had died.
In the bedroom, Kyoko was jolted awake by the explosion.
Her brain had not fully booted up yet, but her body moved on instinct. She sprang upright.
Snatching up clothes with one hand and Huaxiu with the other, she hauled them both out of bed.
Huaxiu, still dazed, was carried—blanket and all—into the inner room, the one without an outside-facing window.
"Stay here, Huaxiu. Don't come out."
Set down on the floor, Huaxiu could only stare blankly, her clear eyes full of confusion.
What happened?
No one answered her. Kyoko was already moving at full speed, dragging clothes on and grabbing weapons. The room was empty again.
Was it infected? Human attackers?
A terrible feeling welled up in Kyoko's chest.
Fortunately, she had not packed all her guns and gear and left them on the seventh floor. If she had, she would have had to buy everything again from the system right now.
Since it was still pitch dark outside, the NV8300 night-vision goggles she had acquired earlier finally had a chance to shine.
Bullets came screaming through the window, slamming into the wall in front of her and punching halfway through twenty centimeters of concrete.
Sniper on the building opposite!
That answered the question. If they were using guns, there was no point wondering what kind of enemy this was.
They must have exposed themselves during the daytime while driving around. After all the explosions and fires they had caused inside the city, they had finally been noticed.
There was no time to think about anything else. The sniper had to go first.
In the rush, Kyoko only managed to throw on her helmet and chest armor. There was no time to suit up fully.
"Damn it—missed. Those idiots downstairs ruined it."
On the opposite building, the sniper hadn't seen his target fall and cursed as he raised his weapon again.
The windows in Kyoko's apartment were usually kept covered with curtains. The sniper's scope only had low-light vision, not X-ray vision, so he had no way to clearly see inside.
"Can't see the target. How am I supposed to hit her, captain?" shouted the machine gunner. He had no thermal optics either.
"Doesn't matter. Fire!"
It was not the time to bother aiming. Ammunition was a consumable. Even if it took ten thousand rounds to kill one person, so be it.
"Understood!"
The fire-support group on the rooftop opened up without restraint.
In an instant, gunfire thundered. Muzzle flashes lit the night sky, and rounds tore into the apartment, punching holes through everything in sight. Even the curtains were shredded to pieces. The walls were chewed full of craters. The sniper added an occasional 12.7mm round on top of it all.
This was bad—she was completely pinned down.
Kyoko had retreated into the kitchen, one of the few blind spots in the enemy's line of fire.
She was worried about the three upstairs—please don't let them get hit. But right now she was in no position to rush up and check on them.
Through the night-vision goggles, she could make out the shooters clearly enough.
At night, muzzle flashes were the perfect "shoot here" sign.
So die already, bastards.
She found her moment and fired out the window.
Unfortunately, she missed. The machine gun only paused for a heartbeat—just long enough for her to relocate—before resuming its roar.
The bullets came in ceaselessly, like water from a broken dam. Full-power rifle rounds tore through curtains and gouged the walls. The sniper also kept slipping in those 12.7mm heavy rounds.
"Damn it, how am I supposed to fight this? There are still enemies by the minefield downstairs too. Damn it!"
Keeping low and angled away from the enemy, Kyoko did not dare expose her head. She could only poke the gun out and return fire blindly.
That sort of shooting was little more than psychological comfort. It was never going to produce real results.
This couldn't continue.
Kyoko felt stifled to the extreme. Suppressed by enemy fire, she could barely launch an effective counterattack.
Smoke grenades would not help. The enemy wasn't carefully picking targets—they were blanketing the area. Once they had identified this apartment as the source of return fire, they would keep hammering it.
There was only one option: move floors during a lull in their fire. Fifteen wasn't usable anymore.
Just as she finished reloading her rifle, a deafening screech erupted from upstairs.
The floor shook violently. Then came the crashing sound of shattered glass—followed by an explosion so loud it felt like the world split apart.
Kyoko's heart clenched. She slammed herself against the wall, her eardrums screaming.
Well, that woke her up completely.
Adrenaline flooded her body. Her mind spun up at once, and every part of her suddenly moved with greater clarity and precision.
When she came back to herself, her ears were still ringing.
Had Miranda and the others done that? The unused rocket launcher they had left in the apartment was upstairs.
They had fired a rocket from inside the room.
Outside, the sustained machine-gun fire stopped. Seizing the chance, Kyoko dashed up to another floor and peered out through the dual night-vision goggles.
The opposite building was wreathed in smoke.
The machine-gun position was now rubble. The sniper was silent as well—either dead or relocated.
"Beautiful. That rocket came at exactly the right time!"
She could not help praising it. Now it was time to beat the drowning dogs.
Raising her rifle, she swept the dark for movement.
There—the sniper.
He was scrambling toward the stairwell on the opposite building, blood pouring from his arm.
During the explosion, he had been struck in both hands by flying fragments. Now he was half stumbling, half running, trying to escape.
"Damn it all, why did I ever take this trash job with these people?!"
He cursed all the way, desperate to run.
But the moment he spat those words, a bullet struck the top of his skull.
Bone fragments and the round itself blasted out the other side. He didn't even stiffen before he dropped, dark red blood beginning to spread beneath him.
Not bad at all. Pretty clean.
It wasn't Kyoko who fired that shot.
It was Brent.
Even before Kyoko fully understood what was happening, the three upstairs had already moved into action. After another full night's rest, Brent felt as if her body had nearly recovered. It was a medical miracle—less than forty-eight hours after a tearing gunshot wound, she was already fighting again.
Now that the enemy's firing positions had been neutralized, both the sniper and the machine-gun crew on the opposite rooftop were dead.
Watching the sniper collapse, Brent sneered inwardly.
"So this is supposed to be a sniper? No spotter, no cover, tries to run when things go bad. Trash."
As far as she was concerned, a sniper shouldn't be working alone at all. There should be a spotter, support personnel, backups. At least, that was how it had been in the army.
Standing by the window, Kyoko stared in a daze at the mangled corpses strewn around the minefield.
That was it?
All dead?
The mines had done all the work.
Poor bald boss. The stimulant he'd injected hadn't even had the chance to show what it could do before he was blown apart.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 138)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter160)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter175)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 163
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 150
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 170
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 145
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 125
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 100
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 90
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 55
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 66
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 55
Still playing traditional Honk 35
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 35
What Should I Do After Switchi 24
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 35
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 27
Transmigrated as Sukuna 27
Checking In in Demon Slayer 32
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